Side-by-Side Website Design?

January 7, 2008 6:17 PM

Other than Metafilter, what are some examples of cross-domain branding, where one company with several divisions (or a parent company and its child companies) have multiple sites that are the same, but different? ( I'm looking for something more substantial than slashdot's differing color schemes.) Or, what are some design elements that I can exploit in this project to unify two websites?

One of my existing website clients, let's call them "Company X," has two separate businesses under one corporate umbrella. One does remodeling, siding, basements, and that sort of thing. The other builds new homes. This year, as part of their marketing proposal, and to target the sites more effectively, I will be creating two sites, companyxremodeling.com (already exists, but will be redesigned) and companyxhomes.com. I would like the sites to be "the same, yet different." Their corporate color is a dark forest green, if that helps. Maybe some sort of tab that peels away, like you're flipping the page of a book? Maybe alternate color schemes? Help me, oh great and powerful hive mind!

posted by fvox13 to Media & Arts (14 answers total)

Gawker media is probably a good place to look if you're interested in similar aesthetics with differing colors/etc.
posted by shownomercy at 6:25 PM on January 7, 2008

G.E.
(Or any large worldwide corporation, really)

One of the tools GE uses to reinforce the family across different areas is by using a custom-created typefont, GE Inspira.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:25 PM on January 7, 2008

Google, of course, does this with all of their spinoffs, with the Google logo changed a little for each different category (different color rather than all colors, or the category just underneath the Google logo).
posted by misha at 6:27 PM on January 7, 2008

Multinational companies selling consumer products do that quite commonly. "Click here for our US site."
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 6:28 PM on January 7, 2008

All Wordpress blogs are basically the same site and software running under different skins and templates. That's not directly relevant to corporate branding, but it gives you an idea of how flexible a design template can be if you code it correctly using css. CSS Zen Garden is another good site to look at for examples of how you can code one site but present different appearances.
posted by lsemel at 6:29 PM on January 7, 2008

Dating sites also do this: AmericanSingles/Jdate for example, as well as ecommerce stores that have different skins for different brands: ToysRUs/BabiesRUs
posted by lsemel at 6:29 PM on January 7, 2008

this is in adult (porn) but realitykings.com do it with all their sites... main brand is realitykings.com, and have about 15 sites under it, sites operate on their own but work under the umbrella of realitykings
posted by boyinmiami at 6:46 PM on January 7, 2008

Red Hot Pawn is an amusing name for a chess site.
Chess At Work is the same site, but with a quieter colour scheme, and a less funny name.
posted by pompomtom at 7:14 PM on January 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

fedex
posted by rbs at 7:25 PM on January 7, 2008

EasyEverything.
posted by grabbingsand at 7:34 PM on January 7, 2008

Actually, make that just Easy.com.
posted by grabbingsand at 7:34 PM on January 7, 2008

I would think Metafilter is a good example of this.
posted by divabat at 8:09 PM on January 7, 2008

Also: Virgin.
posted by divabat at 8:11 PM on January 7, 2008

I think you've gotten what you were looking for, so I'm just being pedantic, but technically, metafilter's subsites are just that, subdomains - ask.metafilter.com. not askmetafilter.com.
posted by desjardins at 6:20 AM on January 8, 2008